Here at Transformers At The Moon we are currently working on various projects including rebuilding this website, The Visisionaries.net, LuckyDrawTransformers.com, an archival project on UK Transformers prices, toy releases, store released, the "lead paint" story, TFNation event planning, the Visionaries coffee table book and several others. Well it pleases me that the first project is now ready to share and that is thanks to former head of Hasbro Europe's boys toys, Andy Couzens, we have been able to recreate their internal 1989 European Lineplan Development document that shows dropped, continuing and new items that came onto various European markets in 1989.  The document has been recreated in full as a spreadsheet and will be added to if/when we have access to further documents.

The document includes the number of units ordered by UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland and distributors for each product in 1988 and 1989. From this you can tell which items were not onl available in each territory and their quantity but also it gives insight into how sales were going for the product based on whether it was to be dropped, decreased in number or increased.

It also shows how some  some countries preferred certain items to others or were behind in product releases as was the case with G.I.Joe (Action Force) in France compared with the UK.

The numbers are believed to be in units of 1,000 though that is currently being tripled checked as it may be tens of thousands due to Andy's recollection that the minimum order was 5,000 units for one country as long as other countries also placed some orders.

Some items were released across Europe but were only intended for one or two markets where the demand was high enough. However if those markets could not fulfil the minimum order from Hasbro US themselves they had to bargin with other European divisions for them to also order n amount of the stock in order to reach the minimum requirement. This meant that some markets would order toys even though they had little demand for them but had increased demand for other types of toys. From what I'm told Spain historically was less interested in Transformers but more interested in dolls but they would often take orders in order for other countries to get the product they wanted on shelves.

The document covers some items from Transformers, G.I-Joe, Robotix as well as Pipeworks.

Toy Industry magazine ­­Toy News's Samantha Loveday recently sat down with Hasbro Europe's Country Manager for UK &?Irelan, Foye Pascoe to discuss the recent success of the company.  Below are some quotes that contained Transformers related anwsers, but you can read the full article here.

How has the UK market performed so far this year? Are we in better shape than this time last year?
Hasbro UK has experienced a 14 per cent growth (UK NPD EPOS YTD June 2011). This is due to the strong performance of the recent Transformers movie, and a number of our key brands including Play-Doh, Furreal Friends and Nerf and our key licensed properties within the boy’s category.

What lines have performed well for you so far this year?
We are proud that we have experienced good performance across the full range of our toys and games.
Not only are some key films helping deliver the Transformers and Marvel toy lines, but we are also seeing growth of our classic brands such as Play-Doh, Furreal Friends, Nerf and Supersoaker.

Are there any sectors in particular which have stood out? Boys must have been boosted by the new Transformers lines, for example?
The boys segment has undoubtedly been boosted by a number of key films; Transformers Dark of the Moon has had a positive impact on the Transformers retail presence. Our alliance with Marvel has delivered strong product lines both for Captain America and Thor this year. Star Wars has had a good year and was the number one property in action figures UK (NPD EPOS YTD June 2011).

Finally, any hot tips from your 2012 product line to watch out for?
2012 will be another great year for action films for which we have a range of boys’ toys and games.

Star Wars re-mastered Episode One will hit cinemas in February. Battleship will preview in May, followed by the much-publicised Avengers film from Marvel later in the month.

The Amazing Spider-man will launch in July. Transformers will continue to connect with boys through Transformers Prime programming on Cartoon Network.

Within our girl’s portfolio, My Little Pony programming is currently on air on Boomerang and connecting with a whole new generation of girls.